


traces

by bottledyarn



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 05:54:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18654271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bottledyarn/pseuds/bottledyarn
Summary: After killing the Night King, a girl hides from everyone who might want to know how she did it or who she really was. She finds her silent feet taking her to the foundry.





	traces

It was like a shadow, like a breeze, that she slipped out of the godswood, just like she’d entered it. Jon was on his way in -- alive, which she’d half-doubted, seeing him with the dragon and passing by him to do what she could -- but she couldn’t yet. He would be himself, far too cavalier with his emotions, the moment Bran told him what she’d done. What she’d always been intended to do. 

The piles of bodies were a new geography to tread; she’d crept past the squirming masses what felt like hours ago, days ago, years ago but was only two minutes or so, really. The corpses were different to walk past and over, they were more human than they’d been when they were walking and screeching, reaching and stabbing. Nobody looked towards her -- the dead could no longer see, and the living were too busy looking at the dead to see no one. It’d been easy to slip back into nothing, maybe too easy. Maybe, she thought, it would be nice -- a funny idea -- to step back into herself before everyone else’s idea of what that was changed.

She found her silent feet taking her towards the foundry. Alive or dead, Gendry could anchor her. If he was alive, he probably wouldn’t know what she’d done for a while yet. If he was dead, the foundry would be the last place anyone would look for her. Even if he did know what she’d done, he’d shut his mouth and find a better way to occupy his time than praising her or asking her too many questions as soon as she told him to. 

There was Brienne and Jaime, tersely pacing the battlements and surveying the damage without looking much at each other. The masses of the dead were too hard not to look at -- natural and unnatural, new and old. It seemed that there were few left among the living at all. 

The foundry had less bodies than the rest of Winterfell, which wasn’t saying much. A corpse was impaled on a half-finished spear by the entry, and several deanimated, skeletal ones were halfway up the stacks of hay against the wall. A boy who she recognized as a sometimes-errands-boy in the foundry, young enough that he should have been in the crypts, was underneath a table, his legs shredded by clawing hands, surrounded by a puddle of blood. He was face down, but she didn’t have to turn him over to know he was dead. 

The door to Gendry’s room was shut as they’d left it. Her hand hesitated over the knob nonetheless. She imagined finding...finding anything but an empty room, really. He wasn’t the type to hide, at least not the Gendry she’d ever known, but she pictured him barricaded away, pressed against the far wall, waiting for deliverance. She shook the thought away with a grimace. She didn’t know which would disappoint her more, that or his death in the battle. 

“Arya?” 

There was something like warmth in her chest. She turned around. She hadn’t even opened the door yet. 

He was standing there, looking more confused than she felt was warranted. And looking half-dead. There was a streak of blood tracing from his cheek to his exposed collarbone, a dark line through it demarcating where it was not only blood but a cut from something sharp and lashing. His clothes were torn, and she stared at the patches of skin exposed, looking for the gouges like on the dead boy’s legs, but there was nothing but grime and dried blood. He was staring at her, almost like he already knew what she’d done.

“What?” she said. Maybe a little too defensively. 

He frowned. His mouth opened, and shut. 

“You look like a halfwit,” she said. Maybe a little too aggressively. His eyes were more worried than she’d like. It wasn’t like she was made of glass. 

“You survived,” he said, his hands twitching at his sides like he didn’t know where to put them. She had a few ideas. 

“Did you doubt I would?” she asked, turning away and opening his door. Anyone could see them where they stood. See them and interrupt, or see them and say what she’d done. 

“I…” 

She strode into his quarters and began to yank off her clothes, every piece she touched soaked with one fluid or another. 

“Shut the door,” she said. He was drifting in like a ghost blown on a southern wind, like his legs were carrying him and leaving his spirit behind. He shut the door, looking dazed. She settled herself on the edge of his mattress, nearly naked save for the few underthings that hadn’t been caked in blood. His bed wasn’t very comfortable. That was one thing she didn’t mind about being a supposed ‘lady.’ The beds were always comfortable. 

“I think I might go unconscious if we…” he trailed off, an awkward grimace stretched over his face. He couldn’t even bring himself to say it. She smirked down at her clasped hands. 

“I know,” she said. “I didn’t sleep.” 

He looked up, catching her eyes. “What do you mean, you didn’t sleep?” 

She blinked at him. 

“I mean, I didn’t sleep,” she said. 

He sighed and started pulling off his shredded layers with hands that moved like the dead’s, slow and encumbered by exhaustion and a slight shake that she doubted he even noticed himself. 

“I don’t want to see anyone yet,” she said, as he slumped onto the mattress beside her, taking off his shoes. 

He paused, looking over at her with his sad eyes again. 

“I will tomorrow,” she said. 

“So many are dead.” 

His voice was almost a whisper, and he seemed to not realize he’d spoken, turning back to his shoes. 

“I’ll see them, too,” she said. “Not today.” 

“You’re here to sleep?” he asked. His torso was littered with scratches and scrapes, but none so deep as the errands boy’s; none as deep as the one down his cheek. She reached out and touched that one, the long cut that traveled down his neck in skittering dashes, starting and stopping as whatever it was had lost contact. He didn’t flinch, his eyes tracking her hand up across her arm and back to her face. He touched just above her brow, and it stung -- a cut of her own, then. Probably, she thought, where she slammed her head into the stone. She’d forgotten that. 

“I’m here to hide,” she said, clasping his hand where it traced her cheek. “Just for today.” 

He nodded. 

“They might think you’ve died,” he said, settling down onto his bed. She twisted around so she could see him, look at his shifting gaze -- towards the ceiling, down to her, to the door, to the ceiling. 

“Bran knows,” she said. 

Gendry laughed. “Bran knows too much, I’d say.” 

“I think so,” she said, laying herself down next to him. 

“So many are dead,” he said, again. 

“Not us,” she said. 

“No,” he said, his head rolling to face her, the blood streaking his jaw already leaving imprints on the fabric below his cheek. “Not us.” 

His eyes were half-shut, and she wondered at her own consciousness. He’d only just woken up for the battle, some few hours ago. His eyelids drifted shut, his lips parting as his face relaxed, that worried pinch slipping away. Maybe, she thought, she could sleep now, with so much dragging her down in the past and, for now, so little pulling her into tomorrow. She’d killed the Night King, how bad could facing all of Winterfell’s gratitude be? 

The ceiling above Gendry’s bed was pockmarked with discolorations and gouges, like someone had spent years tossing a knife into the wood as they lay in bed. Or like the wood was poor quality. She began to count. She could fall asleep, she wagered, once she’d counted the same number as she’d killed. Whether she would count the dead as the killed, she could decide when she ran out of the living. Her breathing was slowed, and Gendry’s own even breath drifted like the faintest of breezes over her exposed skin. Maybe she could rest before she had to decide anything.


End file.
